In the subterranean drilling of oil and gas wells, cuttings are formed in the drilling mud or fluid medium that surrounds the drill bit. The drilling mud often contains oil that coats the cuttings present in the mud so as to contaminate the cuttings. As a result, the oil contaminated cuttings are a hazardous waste, the safe use and disposal of which poses several major environmental problems.
Various washers have been proposed to address this problem. Generally, in these washers the oil contaminated cuttings are treated with a detergent solution to remove the oil from the cuttings. Although the oil is removed from the cuttings, the safe disposal of the removed oil must still be achieved. Thus, these removal methods do not result in an easy and environmentally safe means of removing and disposing of the oil from the cuttings. Furthermore, when the removed oil is disposed of as a waste product, its use is permanently lost and the process is not economically efficient.
Thus it is desirable that the oil coating be removed from the cuttings in a manner that is both environmentally safe and economically advantageous by allowing for the recycling of the removed oil back into the drilling mud. Such a process would allow for both the reclamation of clean cuttings and the reuse of the removed oil.